In smaller print appears this deck headline: “Experts say the suspect in the Arizona shooting rampage is fixated on issues cited by other extremists. But he also appears to have been influenced by the far left.”

See? Balance! The piece opens as follows:

The ramblings of accused Arizona killer Jared Lee Loughner are difficult to tie to a coherent political philosophy, yet in them can be discerned a number of themes drawn from the right-wing patriot and militia movements, experts said.

Making my job easier is the fact that the piece is nothing more than a rehash of a much derided New York Times piece from two days ago — a piece that has been systematically taken apart by others including Matt Welch of Reason and Daniel Foster of National Review.

Like the New York Times piece, the L.A. Times piece is based almost completely on the opinions of some clown from the Southern Poverty Law Center — an organization that, in Jesse Walker’s colorful words, “would paint a box of Wheaties as an extremist threat if it thought that would help it raise funds.” I happen to like Brent Bozell, but I will nevertheless quote Matt Welch’s colorful description of the SPLC because it is so entertaining:

Quoting the SPLC as an impartial arbiter on right-wing extremism is about as credible as quoting Brent Bozell as a fair-minded assessor of media content. This is not one of those, oh-the-ACLU-is-evil knee-jerk kind of observations; seriously, read up on the subject before either quoting from the organization or taking its findings as Gospel.

an organization that just labeled immigration restrictionist groups “hate groups” and issued an “alert” to law enforcement officials nationwide to fear for their lives when pulling over vehicles with right-wing bumper stickers.

Yet this SPLC hack is the main “expert” — and he finds great significance in Loughner’s bizarre statements about “currency”:

“What you can see across the board in his writings is the idea that you can’t trust the government — that the government engages in mind control against its citizens,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long monitored the radical right.

Loughner’s assertion that he would not “pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver” is a running theme among right-wing opponents of the Federal Reserve system.

“The people who talk about the manipulation of currency follow it backward from the IRS to the Federal Reserve … that it’s run by either secret, powerful elites or secret, powerful Jewish elites,” said Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a nonprofit group that also monitors right-wing extremism.

As the National Review’s Foster said of the NYT piece:

Potok has a much sharper analytical mind than I, and has done some mighty quick and conclusive psychological profiling of Loughner. He cuts through the morass of utter nonsense in Loughner’s statements — most of which treat the concept of “currency” as a talismanic, metaphysical, and even supernatural catch-all — and seizes on a barely coherent remark about the gold and silver standards as evidence that Loughner was moved to action by monetary policy.

Even if you want to paint Loughner as concerned about the gold standard, you are left with the syllogism I wrote the other day, in a post titled Rantings of a Madman:

If that makes sense to you, I have a video that will make even more sense:

This bizarre video, packed with syllogisms every bit as logically compelling as the one I just quoted you above, has a bunch of nonsense about people being the “treasurer of their own currency.”

The full context of the line about not paying debts with currency not backed with gold and silver is this, from near the end of the video:

Ah, a lack of trust in God: the true hallmark of the typical right-winger!!!

Once again, I will cite Matt Welch’s comments on the NYT article, for they are apt here. Loughner’s comments are not indicative of a right-winger ranting about the gold standard; they are indicative of, as Welch puts it, “a crazy dude just stone rambling about shit.” Indeed.

The article does get around to pretending at balance — in the 14th paragraph of a 19-paragraph article — by allowing that, sure, there may have been some leftist influences for our young Mr. Loughner:

On the other hand, some analysts say Loughner had an equal number of leftist inspirations.

“The Communist Manifesto” is one of the books he favored, and a former high school friend reported on Twitter that Loughner was a “pot head” whose tastes ran to Jimi Hendrix, the Doors and Anti-Flag a radical leftist punk band whose music focuses on themes of corporate greed, U.S. foreign policy and opposition to war.

At that time, she said, he was very philosophical and leaned to the ‘left.’ She said, “For the Bush/Kerry election we all wore “1 term president” buttons. That election was HUGE to us.”

Their group was “liberal in wanting to change the way the world was run, we both wanted to. He took it to an extreme I never would’ve.” She said he was a “political radical” long before the teaparty, Glenn Beck, or Sarah Palin came on the scene.

Dave Weigel quotes one of the friend’s Twitter messages: “As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy.”

Is there a reason that we are not told about this? Is there a reason that this friend is quoted in L.A. Times but talks about his drug-taking and music habits? Is there a reason that even these unilluminating facts are disclosed until the 14th paragraph?

Is there a reason that the headline blares a connection between this guy and the far right, based on some attenuated crap from a discredited hack organization– but readers are never told that the guy’s own friend said he was “left wing” and “quite liberal”???

Why, of course there is. I don’t think I have to insult your intelligence by pointing it out, do I?

What I can do, however, is engage in some inflamed rhetoric.

Die, L.A. Times. Die already. Pull the plug. The time has come.

UPDATE: Thanks to Hot Air for the link. As always, please bookmark the site and come back!

You know who really does a number on this inane article? Matt Welch. Go and read.

Earlier today we had some fun with the guy who said today that we needed “an atmosphere of civility and respect” — after having said in October 2010 of the governor of Florida: “Put him against the wall and shoot him.”

A line I thought about using but didn’t: “What? They couldn’t get Al Sharpton?”

The senseless violence in Arizona this past weekend left all of us stunned, but this devastating act hit home for me more than most. I have been a victim of violence that could have cost my life, and I have been involved in controversies that led to violence in which my words were distorted and misused.

. . . .

I hope that as we celebrate the birthday of Dr. King this weekend, we can think as he did about how we can be passionate toward what we believe in without also being poisonous. It’s time for all of us to strive toward a place where intelligent conversation supersedes nonsensical violence.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I know, I know. You think I’m making this up.

I’m not. I swear I’m not. Click the link if you don’t believe me.

Al Sharpton. The guy who incited riots with anti-Semitic rhetoric, and lost a defamation suit for accusing an Assistant D.A. of being a rapist.

It’s clearly targeted at stopping the Fred Phelps monsters from picketing the little girl’s funeral. But thanks to a doctrine that allows reasonable “time, place, and manner” restrictions, it’s also almost certainly constitutional:

Arizona legislators quickly approved emergency legislation Tuesday to head off picketing by a Topeka, Kan., church near the funeral service for a 9-year-old girl who was killed in the Tucson shootings. Unanimous votes by the House and Senate sent the bill to Gov. Jan Brewer for her expected signature. It would take effect immediately.

. . . .

The Westboro Baptist Church said Monday it plans to picket Thursday’s funeral for Christina Taylor Green because “God sent the shooter to deal with idolatrous America.” The fundamentalist church has picketed many military funerals to draw attention to its view that the deaths are God’s punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

Betcha Phelps is gay. But I digress.

The girl was the youngest of the six people killed during the shooting at an event held by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was among 14 people injured. Giffords was shot in the head and critically wounded.

Numerous states have passed laws restricting protests at funerals after members of the Westboro church began protesting at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Arizona legislation is modeled on an Ohio law that was upheld by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Sinema said.

The four-paragraph Arizona bill makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail to picket or conduct other protest activities within 300 feet of a funeral or burial service — about the length of a football field. The prohibition applies from one hour before the event to one hour after.

The Westboro ghouls say they were going to picket 1000 feet away at an intersection anyway.

These Arizona legislators are pretty good at getting sensible legislation passed fast. Trade ya for ours!

So his view is that we can’t really blame overheated rhetoric for the massacre, but let’s try being kinder to each other anyway. Of course this is reminiscent of the time he skullfraked the blogosphere:

There is a certain consistency of wanting the rhetoric tamped down, and he seems to be genuinely non-partisan in his approach. I respect that, although I also remember what the Supreme Court wrote in Cohen v. California, explaining why the first amendment includes the right to walk around a courthouse with the words “fuck the draft” written on his jacket:

[I]t is well illustrated by the episode involved here, that much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas capable of relatively precise, detached explication, but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well. In fact, words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated. Indeed, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter has said, “[o]ne of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures—and that means not only informed and responsible criticism but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation.”

Contrast Jon Stewart’s very reasonable, very human reaction to things with this little bit of sociopathy from Howard Fineman, writing at HuffPo yesterday. He starts off reasonably enough talking about how reaction to tragedy shapes human events:

“That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida,” Mr. Kanjorski said. “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he’s running for governor of Florida.

Arizona’s Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who on Saturday suggested radio and television talk shows were somehow responsible for inciting a man who may be mentally disturbed to kill six people and wound 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), once blamed policymakers for violence in his county because they had stopped institutionalizing mentally ill people.

Dupnik also suggested that local schools should check the immigration status of students and that many of the social problems in his county were attributable to illegal immigration–remarks that some fellow Democrats cited as “inflammatory” while demanding an apology from the sheriff.

Additionally, Dupnik once told residents in part of his county to buy guns to protect themselves because he did not believe his department, given its limited resources, could adequately do the job themselves.

As they say, read the whole thing. By the way, Sheriff instead of spending every waking hour engaged in your media whore behavior and wagging your finger at Rush Limbaugh and the like, how about you do your fucking job and catch some criminals?

Seriously, is this guy like the long-lost brother of Mayor Bloomberg or something?

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: See below for the heroic story of Dorwan Stoddard. It’s a must-read.

On September 11, 2001, on a day of death, John and Roxanna Green were welcoming life into this world. Roxanna gave birth to a beautiful little girl that they named Christina. Borrowing from the Daily Mail, this is a picture of the mother and daughter, later in life.

From the article:

Christina already had a bright political future.

She had just been elected to the student council at her elementary school – a post that would be added to her ballet and basketball extracurriculars – and her family were unable to hide their pride.

Hearing of her victory, a kindly neighbour asked if Christina wanted to tag along to a political event that she thought the young girl would enjoy.

It was a sunny Arizona Saturday morning, and Christina was about to meet a woman she would have looked up to – a powerful, beautiful role model, a Congresswoman in the United States House of Representatives.

The little girl must have felt on top of the world. She never suspected that it would be the last day of her life.

For the event that Christina was invited to was none other than the Tucson, Arizona rally hosted by Gabrielle Giffords yesterday – the same event where a madman with a semi-automatic and a grudge against humanity sprayed bullets into a trapped crowd who had no way of escape.

Witnesses estimated that there were roughly 25 people in the parking lot outside a Safeway supermarket in Tucson yesterday.

Due to the way the event was laid out, one told CNN, there was little room for escape once the gunman started firing.

Eighteen of them were shot, six killed – including little Christina.

‘How do you prepare for something like this?’ her uncle, Greg Segalini, asked reporters outside his niece’s house.

‘My little niece got killed. Took one on the chest and she is dead,’ he told The Arizona Republic.

‘She was real special and sweet,’ he said.

You have to think that with the terrorist attacks on 9-11, that Christina was a light of hope to her parents and extended family. And now that light of hope was extinguished.

There is something sick in our political culture, that so many people, upon hearing of this tragedy, looked to try to score political points. Our focus should have always been on the killer and the victims.

Victims such as Gabrielle Giffords. It is appropriate to highlight the attack on her because of her place in society. On Saturday, I was about to post a breaking news post on the Giffords shooting when Patterico asked me to hold off, because he wanted to get in on that. As Murphy’s Law would have it, I had all but completed the post when he made that request, but that is life. One thing I had written at the time was discussing how “evil and undemocratic” this sort of thing was:

I don’t know Ms. Giffords from anyone. But what I do know is that the people of her district chose her to represent them, to speak and vote on their behalf and even if she recovers the people of Arizona will most likely be denied that voice and vote until she recovers. One person vetoed the votes of all the people who chose her and that is wrong and evil, and yes, more serious than the average attempted murder.

We can be gratified that she seems very likely to survive, long term. My impression is that it remains to be seen how fully she might recover, and thus whether she will be able to resume her job as congresswoman. Certainly these videos give us hope. First, we have Dr. Gupta on Cnn, himself a neurosurgeon discussing her condition:

And then we have a discussion with her doctor. And bluntly, I like this guy. He’s confident, and seems to really know what he is doing:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) is “generating her own breaths … breathing on her own,” Dr. G. Michael Lemole, section chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center in Tucson, just told reporters.

And, he said, “I’m very encouraged by the fact that she’s done so well. … She has no right to look this good, and she does.”

Lemole and other physicians, however, cautioned that the congresswoman remains in critical condition and faces a long battle.

As for the person behind the story, well Beltway Confidential has a nice piece on the real Gabby Giffords, here.

And then there was Judge Roll, one of the killed. I have seen statements to the effect that this was an attack on the judiciary as a whole, but by all reports the killer was primarily trying to kill Giffords and one has to wonder if the killer had any idea who else he was murdering. If the murder of a judge is not driven by the fact he was a judge, I don’t see it as having a broader impact, except that it deprives the bench of his talent.

In my mind the ideal judge is one you have little to say about, except that he or she is smart and fair. That goes double for any judge below the Supreme Court. And that is what you hear from people who know Judge Roll:

Such a discussion would have been typical for Roll: He had long been agitating for greater resources amid a flood immigration and drug cases. In late November, according to published reports, Roll sent a letter to Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit urging the court to declare Arizona a judicial emergency. In the letter, Roll said the four active judges in Tucson could not keep up with what he called a “tsunami of felony cases.”

Tucson solo practitioner Richard Martinez, who specializes in civil rights and employment discrimination, said Roll took the administrative duties of chief judge seriously, pushing for additional judges and resources and ensuring the court’s translation system worked as smoothly as possible. “He was very committed to maintaining the integrity of the system,” said Martinez, who has appeared before Roll for more than 20 years in civil matters.

Though federal and state law enforcement officials said that Giffords was the target of the attack, Roll spoke to the Arizona Republic newspaper in 2009 about death threats he faced while overseeing a controversial immigration case. He told the paper he and his wife had been followed by a security detail for a month. “It was unnerving and invasive. … By its nature it has to be,” Roll told the paper.

As they say, read the whole thing. And you might also consider reading these tributes to Roll over at Bench Memos (here, here, and here). One sampler from them:

It’s hard to describe the virtues of Chief Judge John Roll without making him sound too good to be true. I think that’s because he really was as good as all of us wish we could be, but know we so often aren’t. I would say he displayed “heroic” virtue — not necessarily heroic in the dramatic sense, but in the much more difficult sense of living excellence in every hour throughout each day with everyone he encountered.

The thing about this kind of excellence in a life is that it didn’t make the rest of us who knew Judge Roll feel inferior — on the contrary, he lifted up everyone he encountered by giving them attention, courtesy, and generosity of time no matter who they were. When I visited him as a student in the fledgling Ave Maria School of Law to apply to work as his law clerk, he rolled out the red carpet and treated me like I was the really important person there. When my wife and children came into the office occasionally or visited town in later years, he unfailingly made time to visit with us and remembered completely what was happening in our lives.

But if you are keeping count, we still have four other people who had been murdered that day and still more wounded to some extent. They each had families and lived lives of meaning. We may not know as much about them as we do of Christina, Gabby, or Judge Roll, but you can bet that January 8th was every bit as devastating to them and their families.

Ther murdered bodies were barely cold, Ms. Giffords’ blood was still pouring out, when the vampiric elements of the left swooped in, trying to take political advantage, which naturally required a forceful response by persons such as myself and Patterico to defend against these smears. But one of the tragedies in this was that in this bickering the real crime that was committed here was lost in the shuffle.

The next time something awful happens—and it will happen again eventually—can we ask the left for once in their lives not to immediately try to claim that the right was responsible—especially given that there were no facts to support that assertion? It was amazing for us not to even be sure if Giffords was alive or dead, but somehow they were sure that Sarah Palin was to blame for all of this.

Update: Thanks to Red in the comments for directing me this story. Jesus teaches us that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for another. The heroic story of Dorwan Stoddard is an example of that principle in practice:

Dorwan Stoddard and his wife, Mavanell, grew up together as friends in Tucson, and were high-school sweethearts in the 1950s. The two parted, moved away, and married others. But 15 years ago, having survived the death of their spouses, the two were reunited — and then married — in their hometown.

When Jared Loughner began firing on the crowd gathered around Rep. Gabrielle Gifford at the Safeway supermarket in Tucson on Saturday, Mavanell thought the sounds came from firecrackers. Dorwan knew otherwise and quickly pulled his wife to the ground and threw himself over her. Mavy — as she is known to her friends — was hit three times in the legs, and is now in stable condition and expected to survive. Dorwan was shot, fatally, through the head, at the age of 76. Dorwan was memorialized at the Mountain Avenue Church of Christ — a small Tucson-area church where he and Mavy had worshipped and served — on Sunday….

Dory and Mavy “didn’t write any books. There are no streets named after them. There is no monument to them, but their impact in the community of Tucson will last a lifetime,” Nowak said.
Dorwan Stoddard is survived by two sons, four stepdaughters, and his wife.

Maybe there are not streets named for Mr. Stoddard right now, but that oversight should be rectified. Read the whole thing.

On Twitter they are reacting to the claims that Sarah Palin incited murder against Giffords with inflamed rhetoric by having an evolved, civil and intelligent discussion about the limits of free speech.

Ah, who am I kidding?

My favorite was the one that admitted she had nothing to do with Giffords shooting, but said they wanted her to die anyway.

Also, to be fair, some merely wish for her to get cancer and die. Do remember that these are generally the same people who want the government to control your healthcare destiny.

Oh, and that bumper sticker mentioned in one? It exists.

Meanwhile the first polling data is out concerning this idiocy and even CBS news’s polling outfit is having trouble finding Democrats who blame the so-called extreme rhetoric:

Overall, 57 percent of respondents said the harsh political tone had nothing to do with the shooting, compared to 32 percent who felt it did. Republicans were more likely to feel the two were unrelated – 69 percent said rhetoric was not to blame; 19 percent said it played a part. Democrats were more split on the issue – 49 percent saw no connection; 42 percent said there was.

Independents more closely reflected the overall breakdown – 56 percent said rhetoric had nothing to do with the attack; 33 percent felt it did.

I will note the sample size is on the small side, and CBS is notoriously biased toward the left and Democrats. Still, I bet if the question was “do you blame heated conservative or Republican rhetoric for the shooting?” the numbers would crater. Smear fail, Democrats!

Meanwhile before you get to that critical paragraph, CBS news says this:

The lone suspect in the attack, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, had expressed in recent years a deep-seated distrust of the governmentand personal animosity toward Giffords, according to evidence collected by authorities, YouTube videos he made and accounts from former acquaintances.

So they don’t mention that the deep seated distrust of government includes the fact he believes they are engaged in mind control (something Representative Kucinich has stirred the pot on in the past), 9-11 Trutherism and opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only time the liberal media appears to be beyond partisanship or ideological labels is 1) when a Democrat or liberal does something bad, or 2) when a Republican or conservative does something good.

Update: As though that twitter video was not bad enough, here is Alan Grayson and Fast Eddie Schultz discussing where to draw the line.

Grayson of course is the guy who called his opponent in the last election a terrorist and said that the Republican plan on healthcare is to “die quickly.”

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